‘His disciple Minister Grey has seized the opportunity of tightening the noose with which Germany is to be strangled. For ten years English diplomacy has worked for that end, to close up the ring round us. Now the die is irrevocably cast and Destiny goes its way. No one can say positively what the outcome will be, but one thing I do believe, and sixty-seven million Germans believe it with me, and that is that we shall be victorious.
‘We shall win because we are fighting for the right, for our national existence, for civilization. Without England’s intervention this war would have been inconceivable. In France, whom we sincerely pity, and whom this war will crush, one hears a united cry that she is ready for peace. In Russia it was only the aristocratic party that has forced on the war, and they will seize this opportunity to steal. That party of course owns the anti-German press, such as the Nowoje Wremja and other papers, which are financed by England. England alone was thirsting for war, and has pressed the other nations into war against us. For years she has seen how we have excelled her more and more in the industrial world. If people were but honest, they would know that the reason for our success lies in the fact that we are an industrious and hardworking folk. In England, on the other hand, there exists a widespread tendency to avoid work. We have no public holidays. Our working week averages fifty-eight hours. We Directors have no “week-ends,” we work in the factory on an average from fifty to sixty hours a week, and as a rule spend one or two nights and sometimes even all Sunday in the train in order to get work for our business. Moreover we understand how to adapt ourselves to all possible circumstances, while your people in their well-known arrogance, do not concern themselves with the requirements of other countries.
‘Because we have attained great prosperity by ability and hard work, the hatred and jealousy you bear us Germans has grown beyond all bounds. This embarrassing competition must be crushed so that you can go on in your comfortable decadent existence.
‘In order that a people, who appear particularly Christian, may attain this worthy goal, the barbarian hordes of the Slavs are mobilised against the champions of civilization, to whom the world owes so much. The natives in Africa are incited against us, and we are even betrayed in Japan. This last act has raised a storm of indignation in our country which would alarm you, had you any idea of it. England will certainly make terrible amends for this underhand deed. The hatred which is raging among Germany’s sixty-seven millions will avenge itself on England in a most fearful way. For a hundred years the fist of every German will be clenched whenever the word “England” is spoken.
‘I have had many experiences in my time, but never have I known anything like the satisfaction which prevailed throughout our country yesterday, when it first became known that your army of mercenaries had been under the fire of our noble reserves, and that we were in a position to shoot down the people who draw the sword for money. Your soldiers who oppose us in the field will yet learn something of the loathing which our army has for anything that is English. Our sailors look forward eagerly to the time when your fleet, of which you talk so much, appears in German waters. You may be quite sure that a large part of it will never again see the shores of England, even if we lose the whole of our navy. It is to be hoped that your fleet will at last summon up courage to attack us. If they come under the guns of Heligoland and Kuxhaven, your battleships will share the same fate as befell the forts at Liège and Namur.
‘In this war, which is the most shameful crime that has ever been committed against humanity, and which lies entirely at the door of English statesmen, we shall be triumphant. England will be shaken to her foundations. Mankind could not but lose its belief in right and justice, and more particularly in the Divine guidance of the universe, if a country, who in the most shameless way professes Christianity and yet allies herself with Asiatics and barbarians, were to be victorious.
‘Your newspapers, of which we still regularly receive copies, may overwhelm English readers with falsehoods about our army and its successes. Truth is going forward, and before fourteen days have passed our forces will be investing Paris. Belgium, whom you incited to oppose us, is cursing you. France, whom you likewise forced into war against us, will in future show perfidious Albion the door.
‘It is very sad that a country like England which has won for herself so much merit in the progress of mankind, and has produced so many able men, should abandon moral principles proved through the centuries and hand herself over to a band of unscrupulous men like Minister Grey. When one considers all the misery which this war, which is the most terrible the world has yet seen, has caused, it makes one shudder to imagine what sort of conscience the Councillors of the Czar, your Minister Grey and Minister Churchill must have.
‘Your great philosopher Carlyle has foreseen and indeed prophesied the moral decadence which always precedes political downfall. England has become the champion of a band of murderers who eleven years ago assassinated their King and his consort and have now killed a foreign prince. This nation who wishes to be so great conspires with the most barbaric race which the world has ever seen, the Russians, and is the brother-in-arms of the most treacherous, most contemptible, most ungrateful people that the earth holds, the Japanese.
‘I am sure America will endorse the general scorn and wrath towards your country. Australia will not be very grateful to England who wishes to make the position of the Japanese more assured. I will go so far as to maintain that the British world-empire will split off in all directions. The world’s history must be judged by subsequent generations, and the judgment of the world now passes sentence on your country’s action.